Prolife Series (1 of 3): When does life start?

By Arlene C. Thay

"I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself."

"And if we can accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"

- Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

We’ve heard what Rep. Edcel Lagman of Albay has to say on the Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 he authored. Before we even attempt to dissect the bill and raise strong points, we must first try to understand what is the value of a human life? How must one protect the dignity of a human life? More importantly, what is the Church’s stand on life?

As Catholics, we are called to a culture of life. Quoting from the United States Bishop’s Statement of Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New Millennium in October 1999, "Every human person is created in the image and likeness of God. The conviction that human life is sacred and that each person has inherent dignity that must be respected in society lies at the heart of Catholic social teaching… We believe that every human life is sacred from conception to natural death." (Ibid., p. 13).

Created n the image and likeness of God

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Gen 1:27)

God alone creates a human life – absolutely unique, never to be duplicated, an individual fashioned by God. In Prolife.Org’s website: “On the question of when human life really begins, authorities from around the world in the fields of medicine, law, ethics, and the social sciences met together in the First International Conference on Abortion held in Washington, D.C. (October, 1967) and unanimously concluded that: "The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg (or, at least, the blastocyst stage) and the birth of the infant, at which point we could say that this was not a human life. The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week- old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation."

The message is clear. The Church is clear. And Part 2 will discuss why we must not support the RH Bill by Edcel Lagman.

Sources:

http://www.prolife.org.ph/

http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/bishops/faithfulcitizenship99.htm